


Old Beginnings And New Endings

by OrionsVisiting



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Family, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sisters, Stark-centric, Trauma, i wanted this to be wholesome, not Stark-cest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24328969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrionsVisiting/pseuds/OrionsVisiting
Summary: An exploration of Arya’s and Sansa’s complicated relationship.“Sansa and Arya have never had much in common. They were about as different as black and white. But they both understood pain - in different ways, yes, but they both understood. And that, atleast, was something.”
Relationships: Arya Stark & Bran Stark, Arya Stark & Sansa Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	Old Beginnings And New Endings

**Author's Note:**

> This is really messy. Big Drabble vibes all around. There’s not really a story here.
> 
> I tried to make this wholesome, but I don’t think it worked. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this relationship.
> 
> It’s 2am. It’s chaotic.
> 
> EDIT: It’s morning me. Fixed the tags and updated the description. Lmao this shit is so fucking messy I apologize.

Sansa and Arya have never had much in common. They were about as different as black and white. But they both understood pain - in different ways, yes, but they both understood. And that, atleast, was something.

Between war plans and meager feasts, among dragons and wolves, on top of battlements and under crypts, they would find time for each other.

Not necessarily to just talk and or scheme, but there was something very therapeutic about just being in the same room as the other. A calming sense of safety and trust to Sansa, and a relieving feeling of stability to Arya.

It was the sweet kind of affection only siblings long-apart could have for each other.

Sansa showed her love in material ways, by sewing clothing for Arya (that she, mind you, wouldn’t wear most the time) or by having special bread with a hint of cinnamon prepared and brought up to her sister’s rooms.

Simple gestures, but Arya had always been someone who chose action over words, so Sansa adapted.

With Arya you could never truly know. Fluent in the languages of silence and whispers that reminded her older sisters a lot of Varys, it was often impossible to know what Arya was doing half the time. 

But if an outspoken lord would question the legitimacy of Sansa’s status as a Stark and call her a Bolton, by the next day the lord would either not bring it up again, or mysteriously lose a few fingers.

Sometimes Sansa would question if her sister truly loved her, if there was any space for love in those stone-cold, calculating grey eyes.

Arya once suggested she teach Sansa how to defend herself in case someone would ever try to assassinate her, Sansa jokingly reminded her that no one would be a fool enough to try it with Brienne always at her side.

Arya responded, face blank and serious as always.

“They already have.”

Sansa sometimes questions if her sister truly loves her, but not often.

So they’d stay by the other’s side when they could, despite never quite getting the other.

If Arya was practicing in the courtyard, Sansa would watch diligently from above.

When Sansa talked with the maester about rations in her solar, Arya would listen silently from the corner.

They understood each other in the wonderful way of not understanding the other at all, and fully accepting that.

They still had their similarities, though.

Both of them had nightmares. Arya would wake up silently, sweating and gasping for air like she was still drowning in the Braavosi canals. The elder Stark sister would scream, shrill and harsh, unable to wake up from her endless torture.

Sometimes the young assassin will find herself standing outside her door at night, listening to her blue-eyed sister scream in an unfelt pain. She stands there, hand on the door as she stares at the floor, just listening, unable to enter the room.

Why can she never enter the room?

Pain is the two different ends of the same string for them. Where it grounds Arya, it sends Sansa flying back into memories she wishes she could forget.

Unable to ever find a middleground on this, they survive by trying to avoid pain all together. When talking about next courses of action, it’s never ‘me’ and ‘you’, but always us. The two of them, four of them.

The creature that possessed her brother's body would watch them, looking smug about something no one else would understand, all his thoughts reduced to an inside joke that only he was in on. 

Sometimes Bran would appear again, a sliver of sharp intelligence pushing through the fuzzy, vague statements, or a twinkle of amusement in eyes usually dead and sullen.

“Stay” Arya would beg silently every time, “Stay and let the bird fly somewhere else.”

But he never did.

Sansa and her once talked about it. How truly all their siblings, aside from Jon, were dead. Bran wasn’t Bran, wasn’t a Stark, was barely human. Robb was killed by his own foolishness and Arya could barely remember her little brother's face. It hurt, knowing Rickon had grown up never really knowing most of his family, raised more by a wildling than his own mother. Mostly it hurt that he had died alone, a simple tool used for war and not even a real person.

They had argued then, over their mother. Arya commented on how she had treated Jon, and her lack of understanding of wild children like she or Rickon had been, children that needed more. But her sister, true to her red-haired Tully roots, insisted never to speak ill on their mother, who had only ever tried her best. Family before all else.

Though both of them put in effort to improve their relationship, that didn’t mean they’d change for each other. They may be older now, but there is still a part of them still either dirtying their dress or putting a bow on their direwolf. They still fought over their mother and complained about the others behavior- the way they would have if nothing had ever happened and they grew up normally. 

Old, familiar beginnings to the same old familiar stories. Simple words opening the chest filled with words repeated so many times before, the same discussions repeating again and again. One can never change - not completely. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something else hidden at the bottom of the box.

They wouldn’t allow bitter words to remain and linger while they would hide and brood. Things should be discussed and talked out, they weren’t children anymore.

No, young Arya valued honesty and directness over anything, but now deceit and the shadows just helped her feel safer. Sansa’s youthful romantic prince-loving dream of life slowly replaced by a paranoid nightmare of distrust as she grew older.

Sansa often would think to herself, that maybe it was better to share her true intentions with Arya, to reveal her plans on how to gain power, to show her what Littlefinger and Cersei had taught her. She let the thought fester in her head, letting it rot and turn to dirt, let it grow sour to her. No, there were some things she should keep to herself. Her sister didn’t need to know everything, she trusted Sansa either way.

She truly did. And her elder sister trusted her. So when Arya would find her past on the tip of her tongue, the bittersweet story unknown to anyone but herself, she swallowed it down. It didn’t really matter what happened at the Twin’s. It didn’t matter where she got her faces from, or where she learned to fight, how she became the way she is. Her sister didn’t need to know everything.

Maybe they were changing for the worse, each day letting themselves grow more grotesque and vile, turning into unrecognizable, isolated monsters.  
Or maybe this was just them turning into their true, free selves.

Maybe that was the same thing.

But sitting by the fireplace in Sansa’s room laughing over something that probably wasn’t that funny, it was hard to believe that the fire was the thing making their hearts feel so warm.

Because they were sisters, they loved each other, and if love were truly that easy then no one would ever hate. They were complicated beings, not holy or evil but complex, emotional and most importantly; human. They were survivors, fighting each and every day to stay alive. 

Arya and Sansa were just getting used to surviving together.

Their father always claimed they were like the moon and the sun, those two. Different parts of one cycle. Opposite sides of the same coin. Both kind and protective, clever and brutal. Years of yearning to return home only to find home not in cold grey walls, but the cold grey’s and blue’s of the others eyes.

Arya hears screaming at night from Sansa’s room. She stands in front of the door, hand against the wood, listening in silence and staring at the floor. Every night she does this, she waits for the screaming to stop, wanting to believe that this is the best way to do it. This way the routine, the chest filled with nothing but her own fears of change, stays the same. Wasn’t this how it should be? 

But the screaming doesn’t stop.

So tonight, she pushes the door open, and enters.


End file.
